There’s a new book out to defend science, titled uncreatively The War on Science, by Lawrence Krauss. The theme is nothing new: I’d recommend instead The War on Science by Shawn Otto, or The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney, both of which are well-researched single-author works that more objectively examine the people and processes that are literally targeting the institutions of science for destruction.
Krauss’s book stands out because it is completely different. Most people discussing the war on science talk about the influence of dark money, or capitalist motivations to sacrifice long term investment for short term profit, or lobby groups that shape the government for personal gain, or the undermining of the educational system to generate an uninformed citizenry. They talk about specific initiatives by special interest groups that are counter to good science. They discuss the malignant influence of reactionary religious organizations.
Not Krauss!
He has gathered 39 contributors, calling them “renowned scientists and scholars,” who are instead petty, entitled whiners who have personal grievances against the social institutions that have alienated them from the mainstream. It’s written by sex pests, racists, bigots, and defenders of genocide. They don’t like the fact that senior scientists are told not to sexually abuse junior faculty and students. They don’t like the fact that people with different ethnic backgrounds hold protests on their campuses. They resent being expected to respect aboriginal peoples in their research. They are horrified that better informed people are rejecting their old bigotries and recognizing that gender is on a spectrum. They all think that Woke is the enemy of science, and that hordes of Leftists have been battering the Ivory Tower to bring it down.
They’re all idiots.
They also have very bad timing. This series of screeds against the evils of the Left was published this summer, after the Right took control of the government and began to literally wreck science in this country, revoking grants, punishing universities, giving control of the NIH and NSF and CDC and NASA to political hacks who began dictating new directions for science, telling libraries what books they’re allowed to stock, deporting scientists and students who weren’t sufficiently “American” for their taste, enabling more religious influence into government, and basically trashing the Constitution. So now we have this book on the shelves screaming about an apocalyptic threat from gay and transgender scientists at a time when far-right conservatives are flexing their muscles and sending troops to university campuses.
Hemant Mehta has summarized multiple reviews of this wrong-headed book, and the defenses of its authors. They recognize that their timing was ludicrously bad, and all of the authors make the same goddamn stupid argument.
We wrote it before Trump was elected again, and we had no idea the Republicans would do this.
Larry Krauss has been an embarrassment for a long time.
That’s no excuse, and if you’re so ignorant you couldn’t see the Right’s agenda, despite the fact that people have been writing about it for decades, then you are in no position to publish a book that so thoroughly misses the point. And they’re still arguing even now that the True Danger is Wokeness, as Trump tears their institutions down around them.
For an example of how pig-headedly idiotic the authors are, Hemant quotes Jerry Coyne.
The book was put together before Trump began his assault on universities by punishing science grantees and by appointing people like RFK Jr. to science positions. I expected that, after this unpredictable bout of executive-branch bullying, there would be some wokesters who adopted a “whataboutery stance,” saying, “This book largely comprises attacks on how the progressive Left wing is eroding science. But Trump is dong much more damage from the Right.” And right now that is indeed the case, but Trump will be gone in a bit over 3 years, and I expect that, when Democrats take over (fingers crossed), the government will cut back strongly on interfering in the funding and production.
The effect of the Right on science, then, will probably be more temporary. In contrast, that from the Left will last a lot longer, for progressive professors who believe in nonsense like a spectrum of sex in animals will teach this nonsense to their students, and thus it will pass among academic generations. We simply cannot sit by and let progressives distort science in the cause of ideology, regardless of what the Right is doing.
(I hope Jerry is enjoying the sight of the National Guard patrolling his campus, the fucking moron.)
Unbelievable.
Hemant has an excellent summary of this abomination of a book.
The War on Science isn’t a defense of reason. It’s a monument to intellectual cowardice. Its authors, armed with petty grievances about pronouns and diversity programs, aimed their intellectual firepower on paper cuts that exist only in their minds while everyone around them is being decapitated. They act like the biggest problems in science involve grad students asking for inclusive policies, professors acknowledging biological complexity, or institutions offering STEM scholarships to underrepresented groups.
To publish such a book now, in the face of deliberate and systemic sabotage from the highest levels of government, is not only ridiculous, it’s malpractice for any half-decent scientist or science communicator. Even Jordan Peterson should be embarrassed—and that’s saying something.
Every page wasted on performative outrage over “wokeness” is a page that could have been used to sound the alarm about the real, ongoing destruction of the scientific world. And given that many of these authors have spent the past few years appealing to right-wing bigots, that could have been extremely useful.
Instead, by pretending that the greatest threat to science comes from progressive inclusion rather than authoritarian arson, Krauss and his allies have given cover to those who would dismantle our research institutions. They’re compiling propaganda for those who want to bury science under the weight of their own ignorance. They are enablers who fiddle with culture war nonsense while the laboratories burn.
Meanwhile, like most of the professors I know, I’ll continue to teach that the development of sex is a complex, gradual process with multiple variations and that gender is a social and psychological process expressed as a continuum, not because of ideology, but because that’s what the evidence says. At least, I’ll do that until I hear the jackboots marching down my hallway and the Republicans shut down my liberal arts university.
For now, though, here is the list of authors of this terrible book, every one a disgrace. Remember them. They aren’t going anywhere, and we should be prepared to publicly shame them at every opportunity.
Dorian Abbot, John Armstrong, Peter Boghossian, Maarten Boudry, Alex Byrne, Nicholas Christakis, Roger Cohen, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Janice Fiamengo, Solveig Gold, Moti Gorin, Karleen Gribble, Carole Hooven, Geoff Horsman, Joshua Katz, Sergiu Klainerman, Lawrence M. Krauss, Anna Krylov, Luana Maroja, Christian Ott, Bruce Pardy, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Richard Redding, Arthur Rousseau, Gad Saad, Sally Satel, Lauren Schwartz, Alan Sokal, Allesandro Strumia, Judith Suissa, Alice Sullivan, Jay Tanzman, Abigail Thompson, Amy Wax, Elizabeth Weiss, Frances Widdowson
